Hans Werner

Musique italienne et musique allemande, C'est une question qui ne finit jamais; L'un proclame l'orchestre et l'autre le gourmande; Celui-ci n'a de go t que pour les grands effets, Les modulations, les clairons et leur bande; Celui-l veut un air sentimental et frais. Vous aimez Bellini, je suppose, madame ? Et certes, volontiers, je conviens avec vous Que c'est un enchanteur dont la voix porte l'ame, Un maestro divin, et que, si j' tais femme, Ce cygne l giaque, harmonieux et doux, Je le pr f rerais Mozart comme tous...

Ce livre traite de l'histoire et la philosophie de l'art travers la vie et l'oeuvre de trois grands artistes: Beethoven, Michel-Ange, Mozart. L'art r sume la vie. Il entre en nous avec la force de nos sols, avec la couleur de nos ciels, travers les pr parations ataviques qui le d terminent, les passions et les volont s des hommes qu'il d finit. Il est n cessaire que nous nous reconnaissions dans les artistes qui nous ont pr c d s .

John Werner was a storyteller. A Mennonite immigrant in southern Manitoba, he captivated his audiences with tales of adventure and perseverance. With every telling he constructed and reconstructed the memories of his life. John Werner was a survivor. Born in the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was named Hans and grew up in a German-speaking Mennonite community in Siberia.As a young man in Stalinist Russia, he became Ivan and fought as a Red Army soldier in the Second World War. Captured by Germans, he was resettled in occupied Poland where he became Johann, was naturalized and drafted into Hitler's German army where he served until captured and placed in an American POW camp. He was eventually released and then immigrated to Canada where he became John. The Constructed Mennonite is a unique account of a life shaped by Stalinism, Nazism, migration, famine, and war. It investigates the tenuous spaces where individual experiences inform and become public history; it studies the ways in which memory shapes identity, and reveals how context and audience shape autobiographical narratives.

Written by one of the great contemporary German story tellers, this book explores all the subtle anxieties of souls stripped of easy access to hope.